


Weak.

by ToxicPineapple



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Canon-Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Death, Gen, Introspection, Kokichi Ouma Character Study, Self-Hatred, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-04 22:30:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21205127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToxicPineapple/pseuds/ToxicPineapple
Summary: She’s a person of principle. And Kokichi can relate to that, in a way, because there are some things that he will simply never allow himself to do, but Akamatsu is so very loud about it, and that’s part of what makes her weak. Because people are rarely so loud unless it comes from a place of insecurity.(Plus, he’d have to be stupid to miss out on the desperation in her encouraging smiles, the way her lips twitch when she’s questioned, the way she hesitates before spouting whatever optimistic nonsense she’s trying to sell to everyone else, the way that she always trails off once everyone is convinced, looking as though she’s not sure herself… she’s a liar, that’s what she is, and being a liar makes you weak. Kokichi decides that as soon as he meets her.)---Everyone who Kokichi is trapped in this school with is weak.





	Weak.

Kaede Akamatsu is weak.

Kokichi decides that from the very beginning, when he first sees her exploring the school with a detective in tow and that infuriatingly positive smile on her face. To anyone else, she’s probably very strong. Everything she says, she says it with total faith in her words. It’s obvious she believes them. Akamatsu is the kind of person who, if she believes in something, she’s gonna let it dictate everything that she does. She’s a person of principle. And Kokichi can relate to that, in a way, because there are some things that he will simply never allow himself to do, but Akamatsu is so very loud about it, and that’s part of what makes her weak. Because people are rarely so loud unless it comes from a place of insecurity.

(Plus, he’d have to be stupid to miss out on the desperation in her encouraging smiles, the way her lips twitch when she’s questioned, the way she hesitates before spouting whatever optimistic nonsense she’s trying to sell to everyone else, the way that she always trails off once everyone is convinced, looking as though she’s not sure herself… she’s a liar, that’s what she is, and being a liar makes you weak. Kokichi decides that as soon as he meets her.)

If Akamatsu was strong, he imagines he would be harder on her than he is. A couple well-placed jabs when she’s already feeling discouraged are nothing, really, compared to what he’s capable of. Kokichi does best when he’s needling people, but what Akamatsu experiences down in the tunnels is barely anything. And if she was stronger, she’d have made good use of his cruelty. In a way, when he was goading everyone else into abandoning her, Kokichi was testing her. Testing to see how she’d respond. And she proved herself as weak.

(As for everyone else, the people who abandoned her, who didn’t stick up for her when she needed it most… well, they’re weak too, aren’t they?)   
  


Rantaro Amami is weak. Kokichi knows nothing if not how to spot a liar, and the second Amami smiles and laughs and goes  _ oh, yeah, I forgot my talent, I’m such an airhead, haha,  _ there are danger flags going up and he knows for a fact that Amami is a liar. At first it’s a bit hard to tell if Amami is a threat, or if he simply doesn’t trust anybody, but it’s clear after the first day that the supposed amnesiac wouldn’t trust any of them at gunpoint.

Someone like Amami, who is so guarded and so good at lying, who can’t trust anybody, not even himself, is obviously going to be weak. There’s no way a person who can’t trust is someone who could be trusted. And if you can’t be trusted, that makes you unreliable.

(As much as he trusts his own judgement, listening to Amami when he says he’s going to end the killing game and save everyone, only to end up crumpled in a heap on the floor… Kokichi feels a bitter taste enter his mouth. And Akamatsu, whose hands are stained with red that nobody else can see, must be the weakest of them all, because despite the fact that she was trying to lead them, she was the one who let them down. Who let Amami down.)

Kirumi Toujo is weak.

Such a statement would probably get Kokichi’s head slammed into a desk or a locker, but he knows he’s right. Toujo is an excellent maid. She’s devoted to the very principle of devotion. She’ll do anything to fulfill a request. And that makes her weak. If there’s something that you’d do anything for, then, that’s a weakness, plain and simple. Sure, it’s nice to have values, but your values shouldn’t control you, and that’s exactly what Toujo’s do. She insists that people take advantage of her willingness to serve. She insists that people view her as a maid, not a friend.

Not that Kokichi would view anybody here as a friend. The very idea of it is laughable. Getting soft on these fools who he’s trapped with would make him weak. (It’s the exact reason why, when Kaede Akamatsu was hanging from her neck only a few days ago, Shuichi Saihara was showing every last one of them how weak he is. How easy a target he would be. Shuichi Saihara, Kokichi is certain, is weak too.)

Toujo’s actions are so strict, so principled, that Kokichi is certain she’s lying, in some way. Being everyone’s favourite, playing the middle man even when Kokichi takes explicit steps to split the group in half- (another test that his fellow prisoners inevitably fail) no, she’s planning something. Nobody is so purposeful about being the person who they believe in being, at least, nobody  _ would  _ after Akamatsu’s blood splattered on the walls. Toujo is planning something. Toujo is suspicious, and untrustworthy, and for a suspicious untrustworthy person to be planning something in a killing game it means that they must be planning to murder. Murderers are weak.

Ryoma Hoshi is weak. Kokichi admittedly feels bad for the guy when he goes off about how he doesn’t have anything to live for, sympathises with him a little bit because it really sucks not to feel like there’s any reason for you to keep living, but just because Kokichi feels bad for him doesn’t mean that he’s going to try to deny the truth. (If he did do that, deny a truth out of pity, or out of fear, then he’d be as bad as Saihara, and Saihara is obviously very weak.)

Hoshi is weak because he’s giving anybody who would want to commit a murder a reason to kill him. He’s weak because he’s putting all his faith into the idea of a magical video that’ll somehow make him want to live again. He’s weak because he’s not willing to actually try and get better, he just wants a dumb video to solve all his problems for him.

Kokichi almost cries when he watches that dumb video and sees there’s nothing in it that could solve Hoshi’s problems for him. Part of him wishes there was, but he doesn’t really believe in that anyway. Only Hoshi can make Hoshi feel better, and that’s the truth.

( _ Still, _ Kokichi thinks in a moment of weakness,  _ maybe if he sees that that video can’t fix him, he’ll move on and find a reason to stay alive, rather than hoping for one to be given to him.  _ For entertainment, no less.)

Ryoma Hoshi was weak, and Kokichi starts to cry when he sees him dead, and curses every last one of his selfish weak classmates when they don’t do the same. (A little bit of remorse from Kaito Momota isn’t going to cut it. Kaito Momota is remorseful because he feels bad for making a mistake, not because he feels bad for Hoshi. Kaito Momota is selfish and Kaito Momota, Kokichi decides bitterly, is weak, as well.)

Toujo is a murderer, though, and Kokichi decides that there is no satisfaction in being right as he scribbles down letters on a piece of stone when there is nobody awake to see him.

Angie Yonaga is strange.

Strange in the way that, Kokichi wants to say that she’s weak, but at the same time it’s difficult for him to remark as much definitively. She makes him want to say that she’s weak because she uses manipulation to control everyone else, because she came up with a solution that nobody else wants, because she’s too afraid to stop smiling and be unhappy ever. But he can’t say that she’s weak, and perhaps that’s because they have too much in common.

Where Angie is all sunny smiles and laughs Kokichi tends to shoot from what extreme to the other, but that doesn’t mean they’re different. Angie is so adamant that the killing game be ended, he can’t stop looking at her and thinking  _ holy shit, that’s me,  _ and part of him panics at times wondering if her plan is just like his, or will be, anyway, once she stops beating around the bush. If Kokichi had as much power as Angie does, he imagines that he would probably try to do exactly what she’s doing. After all, what kind of audience would want to watch a killing game where all the participants decide to live happily within the school, and never commit a murder?   
  
Angie Yonaga is manipulative and smart and Kokichi sees a lot of himself in her, in places where he isn’t expecting to. He also despises her.

Tenko Chabashira is strong. Kokichi knows it from the second that he sees her because someone so flighty, there’s no way that she could be weak. Her hatred of men should be a large gaping wound to her strength but the truth is that she’s comfortable with herself. She doesn’t hate men out of a place of insecurity. She hates men because she’s stupid. And stupid, Chabashira is very. But she’s not weak.

Normally Kokichi would say that caring for someone as much as Chabashira cares for Himiko Yumeno would make you weak, but not in Chabashira’s case. Chabashira is protective of Yumeno without being selfish. Chabashira understands how other people feel, a lot more than she seems to at times. She  _ should  _ be weak, because she’s so gullible and absolutely incredibly stupid and the type of person to throw herself in harm’s way for a loved one, but she’s not. She’s nothing, really nothing, but she’s strong, and Kokichi has to give her that.

She might be the only strong person who Kokichi is in this school with.

(Considering that her only competitors are a weak-willed detective, a selfish astronaut, a filthy murderer, a big selfless idiot, an excitable robot, and a few other extremely insignificant people, that’s not hard for her to do. But she’s strong anyway.)

She’s also dead, Kokichi realises, when the lights turn back on and the basket is thrown off of her.

Korekiyo Shinguji is weak.

Shinguji is the sort of person who would hide from his problems rather than confronting them. Shinguji is a victim of sorts, clearly, but the fact that he chooses to deal with his problems with killing and lying makes him weak. He’s the kind of person who would say things are okay when they aren’t, who does the scientific thing and makes himself objective even when he’s supposed to be being subjective because sometimes you just have to be subjective. Shinguji is weak because he won’t accept that he’s delusional. He’d rather call other people delusional instead.

Shinguji, Kokichi thinks with a wrinkled nose, is disgusting. His punishment is worse, though.

Himiko Yumeno is weak. She bottles up her emotions, keeps them all inside her, under the guise that they’re a pain. Emotions make things hard to deal with, sure, but she only makes a weak person even weaker by refusing to let them out. Yumeno is the kind of person who would just lie down and die if she was under fire because she’s too tired to fight back. He wonders if there was ever a time when Yumeno wasn’t like that, so lazy and exhausted for a girl so young, but it doesn’t really matter, anyway, because Yumeno is the way that she is now, and that’s not going to change, because weak people rarely change.

(Kokichi thinks this right up until Yumeno starts to cry, and pretends he doesn’t feel bad to have been the one who goaded her into it, because she needs to do this, cry, or else she won’t be any good to anybody at all.)

Gonta Gokuhara is weak. He’s weak because he decides his own usefulness by comparing himself to people who are completely different from him. Gonta is simple-minded and gullible but he’s not stupid and because everyone has told him that he’s stupid he’s just accepted it without a second thought. He’s weak because he allows other people’s perceptions of him to wash over him and make him different. He’s weak because he wants so badly to help other people, to sacrifice himself, that he would truly do anything.

(Kokichi tells himself he doesn’t feel guilty about taking advantage of Gonta’s weakness, because he has a reason for it. A good reason. An important reason.)

Miu Iruma is weak. She’s weak because she can only continue on thinking that she’s necessary to the world. She’s convinced herself that she’s a genius, and people need her, and that’s the only reason she can carry on. Iruma is weak because she’ll do anything to get a little bit of attention, any attention, because she maybe doesn’t think that she’s worth good attention. Iruma accepts the gross and mean words of people around her, even wants for them, and it makes Kokichi sick to his stomach to play into that, but he has to, because he has to make it believable that he gets off on their suffering, because that’s his job.

Iruma is weak because she has somehow deluded herself into thinking that she’s so necessary that she has to commit murder to get out of there. She’s just like Toujo, in that way, justifying the means with the ends. Kokichi feels less bad about taking advantage of her, about using her skills and tossing her away, knowing that out of everyone he was the one who she was willing to kill.

(Because he would’ve seen through her. Because he’s the weakest. Because nobody likes him anyway. Because he always antagonises her. Because Momota is weak and Momota would kill him, in Iruma’s mind.)

Shuichi Saihara is weak. Saihara, Kokichi imagines, is the type of person who he should use for his plan, because Saihara is so wishy-washy. Saihara is continuing on because of a promise he made to a dead girl. (A dead girl who robbed them of Amami, but Kokichi can’t be angry about that, because Amami was weak too.) Shuichi Saihara should be easy to manipulate, to use against Momota, to use to vilify himself. Saihara is likely the one who should kill him soon, and end all of this, because Saihara is-

Saihara is a liar, and Kokichi feels his stomach clench and twist. Kokichi snaps back, responds with spite and venom, antagonises Gonta and practically screams until his vocal chords are ripped to shreds, and he thinks that it’s anger but afterwards, with (real) tears dripping down his face, Kokichi realises that it was surprise. It was surprise because Saihara straightened his spine and lied to his face, because Saihara held Gonta’s hand during his closing argument, because Saihara disobeyed Momota and spoke up for the truth without giving in to what Kokichi wanted.

It’s still surprise, even, when for the first time, Saihara stands up to somebody- and it’s to Kokichi, who he snaps at, a tearful sort of anger in his eyes, and Kokichi thinks,  _ maybe he isn’t weak after all. _

(Kokichi doesn’t hear what Saihara says about him always being alone, because he knows it’s the truth, because he needs it to be the truth. Kokichi is going to die in a few days if everything goes according to his plan, and aside from one other person, he needs to be alone. He needs to be completely and utterly alone. Kokichi needs to die the villain, if he wants anything to change.)

Kaito Momota is weak. Kokichi hates him, despises him and everything he represents, but it would be a lie if he said that part of it isn’t because he’s jealous of him. Momota is in the position to try to save everyone by making them love him, rather than by making them hate him. Momota is stupid and arrogant and so he doesn’t see that this is the only way that the killing games are going to end. (Momota is stupid and arrogant and so he doesn’t see that there are killing  _ games,  _ plural.) Kokichi hates Momota because he doesn’t understand, not even for a second, how lucky he is, that he gets to be friends with everybody, and not enemies.

Momota is weak, too, because he refuses to show weakness. He won’t let Maki Harukawa (who is a murderer and a coward) and Shuichi Saihara (who Kokichi thought he understood but doesn’t) know that he’s in pain. Momota would rather die than admit that he’s dying, and in a way that’s bravery but mostly it’s stupidity and one hundred percent it’s weakness. Momota is a fool if he thinks he can protect anybody at all, especially if he’s dead.

But in the end, that’s exactly what Kokichi is counting on.

Maki Harukawa is weak. There’s only one thing that she knows how to do, and that’s kill. She only knows how to kill because she’s only ever been taught how to kill. Kokichi despises her, despises the way that she regards life as something she can just throw away, despises the way that she just lets her emotions rule her logic. If Kokichi was the same as her, weak in that he lets his emotions control him, then he would’ve broken down by now and killed everybody before killing himself, because if he kills anybody then at least he knows the mastermind is dead too.

Harukawa is weak. The kind of person who would stop at nothing to get her way, to achieve her objective. Harukawa is a liability and she makes Kokichi tremble at times, but when she barges in and there’s pain in his back, it occurs to Kokichi just how  _ useful  _ her weakness can be.

(Momota and Harukawa are easy to manipulate, Kokichi decides, closing his lips as he tilts a bottle back against them. People in love are always the weakest. Always the easiest to get to. Harukawa will do whatever it takes to kill him, after he’s dead, and Momota will do whatever it takes to protect her. Even if that means killing him. That’s what he’s counting on. That’s what he needs to be true.)

Kokichi thinks, deep inside of himself, that he really does loathe Momota, the minute that tears start to fall down his face and the astronaut just stands there, staring dumbly. Momota truly understands nothing. Even after Kokichi is gone, he’s not going to understand anything. Even after Kokichi is gone, Momota is only going to believe what he’s always believed. Because he’s stupid, and because he’s weak. If it was Chabashira standing in front of him right now, or even Saihara, things would be different. But it’s not.

But he doesn’t hate Momota, not really. He hates what Momota represents but his hatred isn’t directed at the astronaut because the astronaut isn’t responsible for much more than the arrow in his arm. Even when he’s lying on his back, feeling cool metal underneath him and smelling the sharp scent of his own blood, he knows that he doesn’t hate Momota, not when the press that’s about to come down on him (a press that is so close that he could reach up and stick his palm against it) isn’t really Momota’s fault. He doesn’t hate Momota. He hates the person who’s really about to kill him. The person who killed Iruma, and Gonta, and Hoshi. He hates the person who everyone else hates.

Kokichi thinks about everything that he hates about all of the people he’s been trapped with. Their weaknesses, their flaws. He thinks about the moments of strength they’ve displayed, how he’s ignored them for the sake of making it easier to antagonise him. The gentle way that Amami smiled at him when they first met, the strong belief Akamatsu had in every single one of them and the sacrifice she was willing to make to send them on their way. The patience with which Toujo treated him, the exasperated chuckle Hoshi gave whenever he said something annoying, the wisdom in Chabashira’s last words and the acceptance in Angie’s open arms and the real anger in Shinguji’s eyes when he thought that Kokichi was mocking Hoshi with fake tears.

He thinks about Yumeno, changing herself for real when Chabashira died, and Kiibo, doing whatever he could to be helpful, and Iruma, helping him for no reason, and Gonta, trusting him when he had no reason to. He thinks about Momota, who helped him over to the press and laid him down gently, and Harukawa, who was willing to do whatever it took to save the one she loves.

He thinks about Saihara, and the strength in his eyes when he yelled at him after Gonta’s execution.

They’re weak. All of them, they’re all weak. But that’s only if he ignores what makes them strong. Kokichi closes his eyes and listens as the press begins to move. He can’t help it when a couple tears fall from his eyes. No one will see them anyway, when he’s dead. He just hopes his plan will be enough, because in truth, it’s all he’s able to do. It’s all he knows how to do. This whole time he’s just been relying on his ability to lie. He’s been doing what he does best, and that’s making everyone hate him.

Because Kokichi Ouma is weak, and that’s the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> kind of heavy ;;
> 
> hey this piece doesn't necessarily reflect my opinions of these characters alright Kokichi is the Perfect Unreliable Narrator imo which means that he has opinions that I don't and even then it's still not ever clear whether or not those are actually his opinions. qwq
> 
> at any rate mmmmmm yeah I wrote this kinda out of nowhere but yknow what it happens. gotta give my favourite antagonist some love
> 
> anyway hope u enjoyed xd


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